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Dark side of Bradford pear trees

Thursday, April 25, 2019Posted by: Dana Walker

Bradford pear trees increasingly are being recognized as another of our nation’s many invasive

mistakes.

They originated in China and were introduced in the United States in 1964 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as an ornamental tree, the same folks we can thank for the proliferation of kudzu and multi-flora rose.

They were widely planted as a landscaping tree of choice beginning in the 1960s and continuing at least through the early 2000s. Lowe’s Home Improvement stores and other retailers still sell them.

Bradford pears were assumed to be sterile because they don’t pollinate among themselves, but it turned out that they pollinate with nearly everything else.